"'Triumph! Triumph! Triumph!' as nasty Pizarro exultantly cries. He's in for a disappointment, of course. Not so the listener and viewer of this performance, which is caught in fine sound and skillfully filmed. Pizarro will, for instance, have no place in the great festival of light that is the finale. Here the rejoicing is so powerful that we switch off the DVD player and go to bed with the surge and sequence of inspired creation fully in possession, convinced that in the whole of opera there's nothing to match it. That's the sign of a great Fidelio, and it means that, throughout, the proportions, structure and balance of the work have been rendered with clarity and conviction. That in turn means that the opening scene—the Marzelline-Jaquino duet and the solos which might seem to be from some other opera—has been integrated, so that the work is a journey from light into the blackest tunnel and out again into an infinitely greater light."—Gramophone